Page 56 of Her Player

“Get off him! Get off him, or I swear to hell on high, I’ll bury your team in lawsuits and paperwork until I dismantle the entire fucking thing!”

Brynn helped me toss one of the guys toward the officials. “Tell ‘em, Mom!”

“Victoria! Brynn! Get off the fucking ice!” Coach bellowed.

One by one, my daughter and I pulled those Pirates off Moose. Punches were thrown around us that we ducked. Men screamed at the top of their lungs, their voices roaring over the crowd that cheered us on.

I’d never witnessed such chaos on our ice before.

The thing nobody told you about crisis was that fury was just fear wearing better clothes.

I knew that. I’d learned it the hard way, in a hospital waiting room fourteen years ago, when I screamed at a doctor for twenty minutes straight because screaming felt better than the alternative. Fury kept you moving. Fury kept your hands busy and your voice loud and your feet on the ground. Fear just kept you still.

So I kept moving.

“Get the fuck off him!” Brynn exclaimed.

I grabbed one of those assholes by the helmet and tugged his face to mine. “Get. The fuck. Up. Or I will have you. Put. In handcuffs.”

“Ah!” my daughter exclaimed.

I whipped around, tossing the man whose helmet I held to the ground as I shoved my hand toward the ice. I grabbed another jersey, tugging at the neck as I watched Coach Mercer lift my daughter clear into the air. She kicked her feet like a toddler, trying to wiggle out of his grasp.

I barely got the other guy pulled off before I was lifted clear off my feet as well.

“I swear, you surprise me every day I know you, Miss C,” Rhett said as he wrapped those burly arms around my waist.

I kicked my feet just like Brynn and realized exactly where she got it from. However, if I wasn’t going to be able to use my body, I’d use my words.

“I’ll have each and every one of you arrested if Moose is hurt!” I bellowed. “None of you will see the light of fucking day again if you’ve hurt our goalie! Do your mothers know you’re out here fucking around with people’s lives?! What if I fucked with your life, huh?! Because if you’ve ruined his, I’m going to fucking ruin yours!”

“Miss C!” Jett barked with laughter. “You tell ‘em, Miss C!”

“Put! Me! Down!” I exclaimed as I tried kicking out of Rhett’s grasp.

He didn’t put me down until I stood in front of the team bench and off the ice. But I didn’t stop pointing around him and glaring at the opposing team’s coach.

“I will have your fucking head!” I bellowed. “And I don’t play around with my words! Ask my goddamn daughter!”

“Yeah!” Brynn exclaimed.

“Is that really what you have to do?!” I asked, bellowing across the ice as my voice finally cracked while Jett laughed somewhere in the distance. “You aren’t good enough to rely on your skills, so you gotta take out the team just to win?! How the fuck did you ever get your goddamn contracts signed in the first place with that kind of lack of coordination?! I’m surprised your boys could hold the pens to sign in the first fucking place!”

And that’s when one of the officials stepped into my vision with a blood red face. “Miss Caldwell, if you don’t calm down, the game will be forfeited.”

I glared at the official, holding my head high and staring down my nose at him. “Then you better go ahead and fucking call it for unsportsmanlike conduct. Because if I get our doctor on call back here and he figures out that Moose is hurt in any way, I’m instructing my team to go after blood before I make that asshole coach pay for Moose’s fucking medical bills, because you know damn good and well they took a shot at the weak part of his helmet on purpose.”

The official stared me down for quite some time. So long, in fact, that Caldwell Arena fell silent once more. We could’ve heard a pin drop onto the ice as I stood there, immobile. Unwavering.

Then the official shook his head before skating his way back out onto the ice.

“How the hell did you navigate the ice in those heels, Victoria?”

I barely heard Rhett’s question as I watched the pack of officials that gathered at the other end of the ice. A play booth. We needed a fucking replay booth in Caldwell Arena. We had one, but the cameras weren’t up to date. They caught big things, but the cameras weren’t high-tech enough to catch the smaller, finer things.

I was about to remedy that fucking situation.

Then the official skated into the middle of the rink and turned on his microphone. “Tonight’s game is being forfeited for unsportsmanlike conduct on both sides.”